Of the 3 Olympic movements (Snatch, Clean, Jerk) the snatch is easily the most complex and most technical. Why? The bar has to travel the great amount of distance, its has the longest sustained bar speed, and uses the most amount of body movement at one time.

There are a number of reasons why we mess up the snatch and a number of recommended fixes for those technical failures. If you have any knowledge of the Olympic lifts at all most of them are easy to spot. However, fixing them are another problem altogether.

Bob Takano of Takano Athletics recent published an article honing in on one specific lifter’s problems and draws out not only the technical faults very well but also the recommended fixes.

I wake Connor up this morning and we head to the bathroom. We have the whole talk about Pee Pee in the Potty. He sits, we chat. I say, “Connor goes pee pee in the potty.” Of course nothing is “happening” in the potty. I repeat my line again. Connor replies, “No, No, No. Pee pee in a diaper. Pee pee in a diaper.”

Holy Baby JESUS….the past couple months have been just stupid busy. Last contact was mid-April and we were rock’n some new MAJ rank and pay here in the Walsh family. So let’s start after that….well a little before perhaps.

First, it is finally warming up here in Korea. I did not care for the winter. We are at that in-between weather where it is cool enough to open the windows, but just warm enough in the afternoon where you would like to turn on the air conditioner. So we just turn on the fans.

Young Mr. Walsh started a new day care on April 1st. I was hesitant to blog about it because, for me at least, the verdict was still out. The only person I have ever seen Connor warm up to immediately (besides his mom and dad) is his sister. That little love affair has been going on since day one…I think it is because she’s a little person like him. (HA!) Even the Grandmas have to give him some time to settle in before he will get all lovey with them. It is just the way he is. If you rush him before he is comfortable he’ll let you know his personal space is not quite ready to be invaded. (On a side note – I do wish he would have a little more respect for my personal space….with his head up my ass all the time…) Regardless – mommy was a little concerned about how this new day care was going to go. Well the jury is in…it took all of a week and he loves it. We get there in the morning and he pushes the doorbell so the song plays. His teacher meets us at the door and he will literally move from my hip to hers. They have this thing every morning where they giggle, lock eyes, bump foreheads, smile at each other and hug. If I have not yet smiled for the morning, that usually does the trick. She says a bunch of stuff to him in Korea that I do not understand, but it’s probably none of business anyway…not my love affair after all. It is a Korean daycare. The director is Korean, the teachers are Korean, all the signs are in Korean. They speak enough English that we can communicate a bit. On the very basic level – they get paid and Connor seems really happy to be there…even seems to want to be there. The majority of the kids in his class are Americans. There have been a few days when I pick him up that he doesn’t want to leave – which makes me a little jealous. HOW DARE HE!! Oh and twice a week he is supposed to wear his uniform. He’s always coming home with goofy stuff…The month of May came around and on the 7th and 8th I attended a Crossfit Level 1 Seminar down in Seoul. It was held on the Army post there – one that has a great CrossFit gym, Fight Tonight CrossFit. I was so jealous checking out all their equipment, gorgeous pull-up rigs and all the “what-nots”. The Fight Tonight staff and the Crossfit staff were all really great. We rocked a LOT of lectures and hands on practice. Rocked a couple workouts: Fran and a little triplet. I could really tell several months of morning sickness, tiredness and a three-month cold had degraded me physically. I scaled Fran, which is so annoying but part of the deal when your preggers. I had to give myself a little reality check that I was attending the seminar 14 weeks pregnant and wanting to puke 8 minutes out of every 10. I passed. So I can official say Paula Walsh, CrossFit Level 1 (CF-L1) Trainer. The coolest part of the whole thing was messaging my coach from Texas and telling her the news. April is a big part of why I fell in love with CrossFit in the first place. Her passion for the sport and for her athletes is contagious and reassuring and amazing. Too many times she looked me in the eye and told me I could do something that I did not think was possible…and she was right. Thanks April. I. Love. You. We got home from Seoul just in time to unpack and pack up again for Thailand. I posted pictures during the vacation, but here are the best ones. So we traveled to Phuket (poo-ket) Thailand. Yeah it is not pronounced like you think it is. Phuket is a touristy little island in the southern part of Thailand. It was tropical and warm and surrounded by the ocean. Most importantly the whole family was together, because we also flew Dawn in from Texas. We went on a few tours, did the obligatory elephant ride (a couple times), rode behind a water buffalo, saw them harvest rubber from a tree, drank some Thai tea, watch cashews being shelled, checked out curry being mashed together, ate a LOT of Thai food, explored a temple and saw a serious huge Buddha statue (the sign literally says – The Big Buddha). Everywhere you go they serve pineapple and watermelon…everywhere. Plus you can get fresh squeezed watermelon and pineapple juice…everywhere. It is delicious, especially after all the crappy produce here in Korea.

A few observations about Phuket. First, they don’t seem to have very good urban planning going on. The streets are a little thrown together and their power lines look like a bad knitting project. 2) There are LOTS of people on scooters rolling around. There doesn’t seem to be too many laws regarding just how one should ride these scooters on public streets. I saw two adults and two children all riding on the same little scooter….and they were passing our van. Even with all the unique socially acceptable driving habits in Phuket, they still drive WAY better than the human version of PacMan we encounter on Korean streets. 3) The island does not seem to have a handle on keeping tourism going for its extended future. We took a day trip to an even smaller island, Koh Khai, off the southern part of Phuket. The place was a dump. They were selling beer in glass bottles, which meant there was broken glass all over the beach. There were a lot of people working there that were drunk and obnoxious, heckling people as they walked by. The water that was lapping up on the beach was full of plastic, cigarette butts and just a bunch of random garbage. Oh, and if you wanted to use the bathroom it cost the equivalent of $1 (or 30 Baht). The National Park Fee was covered in our overall tour cost; the fee to the bathroom was not. Like we wouldn’t have paid a little extra for that…..

Phuket, Thailand was a great family vacation. I was happy to go there and check it out while on this side of the planet. WELL worth the experience. I am not, however, interested in going back.

May also found me a new job….unpaid volunteer job of course…extremely flexible hours. 😉 There is a little Thrift Store on post (most Army posts have one) called Casey’s Closet. A fellow spouse is on the board called the Kka Chi Community Association that operates the store, and encouraged me to check it out. I started volunteering at the store every other Thursday way back in January. They recently had a board position open, the Publicity Coordinator. I went for it. Got voted in just a few days before we left for Thailand. It’s a really great organization. Kka Chi operates Casey’s Closet and helps distribute money made through the store back into the community. People drop off the stuff they don’t want any more, volunteers sort and display that stuff, other people come in and want that stuff, the money goes back into the community. We help fund unit parties and balls, bought ping pong tables for a few of the barracks, paid for a bunch of food so the Camp Casey Elementary school kids could have a “games day” at the park this week. Honestly, it is all really very cool. Very cool. There are way worse things I could be doing with my time.

I know, I know it’s been awhile. I started taking classes again in February and it is kicking me in the butt. The homework was MUCH easier when I had a kiddo that was taking two two-hour naps everyday. Since the Demon is taking about two naps a month, its hard to get all my homework jammed into just those four hours…..a month. I guess I could give up working out, but that has a special set of problems and would also end up costing me time in the long run. As I write this, I am not “completely” done with my homework, but I have GOT to get this post out.

We hosted a little promotion party for Mr. X last night. He’s a Major now, which is cool. Being promoted from Captain to Major is a milestone is the career of a military officer and as my sister told me once, “It is not a celebration until you open up a nice bottle of wine, Paula.” We decided to have a little party. Ironically, no wine was involved, but I think we hit the essence of what she meant.

The party was really nice. Mr. X seemed to really like it…maybe not at first, but the evening grew on him. A bunch of the Soldiers from his Battalion were there and almost all of his medics made it as well. The medics all looked SHARP, by the way. They out dressed people well above their pay grade.

There were some voids in the evening though…voids that were, ironically, as loud as a freight train. “The Spawn” was missing with her short little legs and her three-inch heals and her smile that is brighter than the sun. I think that was the biggest void of all. We all knew there were things that as “A Family” we would miss out on with this move to Korea, but that one really….fucking….sucked. Extended family was missing. After being stationed in Texas for so long, if there was a big deal the Fort Worth Crew was a part of it either before, during or after. Not so much this time. There was also a lot of Mr. X’s military mentors, past co-workers and buddies that were obviously missed. I know these people were on his mind because many got mentioned during the night. I personally caught myself wishing I could look around the room and see Nick and Adrianne or Steffan and Christa or Phil and Jen or Clay and Diana. Maybe even a Ralph or a Don or a Casey or a Joni and Tim or maybe just one Liz. But….not so much. And I am not suggesting that the night was anything other than amazing…however…

So here we go. Here are the pictures and some of the story for those that could not be with us.

The Cake

The Warrior’s Club

Mr. X’s New Boss LTC Kim Opening up the Evening

Our Chaplain

The “Pinning”

A Thankful Major

Me realizing he was now going to make more money. Nah, I already knew that, I was just still really stoked!!

Thanks to my husband’s amazing sewing skills it appears I am now off the hook for this little hiatus to South Korea. Of course there is a story behind that comment….there is ALWAYS a story…

One evening almost a year ago, Mr. X and I are standing in our kitchen in Harker Heights, Texas.

“I wanna go to South Korea,” I said.

“Huh? Where? Why South Korea? Why not Germany? I would love to go back to Germany.” Mr. X replies with just the slightest hint of seriously in his tone. The kind of seriously that you hear in a Tina Fey/Amy Poehler SNL skit. So, not necessarily good. He doesn’t have a seriously tone because South Korea is a bad assignment – not at all. But not too many service members go out of their way to request an assignment there. South Korea is a really long way away from the states – unless you are counting Hawaii (which is a really long way away from all the other states). It’s kind of isolated on the southern part of a peninsula (you can go for a walk up north but they may not let you walk back unless you can get Bill Clinton involved.) Then there is all the history (Korean War), the politics (not going there), thermonuclear war and “what not” to consider. But on the flip side there are four seasons to enjoy again (if you can afford the cold weather gear – check out this blog post for more information on that whole fiasco), mountains to climb, Korean food to eat (which totally kicks ass), Seoul to explore (which is somewhere between the 2nd or the 8th largest city in the world depending on who you ask), a nation of people who work hard and value family and the opportunity to learn a new culture first hand. Oh, and knock-off Coach purses!

“Well, I would really like to go to Italy, but I don’t even think that’s an option.” I mutter, “But South Korea would be so cool – It’s so expensive to travel to Asia and that many hours on a plane has got to just suck the life out of you (little did I know just how right I was about that one….). So if I had to choose, I would choose Italy and then South Korea and then Germany. But I want to go to South Korea. We could afford to take a vacation to Europe, but we’ll probably never travel to that part of the world if the Army doesn’t make us. Then we could and take a vacation to China…I want to touch the Great Wall of China and then do a burpee on it. We could hit Thailand and maybe Australia. But if all I did was do a burpee on the Great Wall of China the entire two years would be worth it for me. When I’m 80, I want to tell people about that burpee.”

Now you must know that Mr. X was ready to leave Fort Hood prior to this conversation. We had been weighing our pros and cons for some time now; not our first exchange on the matter. Moreover, this was the second time he had been stationed at Fort Hood – once very early in his military career and now. For this last stent at “The Hood”, he had taken Phase II of PA school in 2009, was assigned to Fort Hood immediately after he graduated. He deployed three months later and upon returning, worked on Fort Hood for another 18 months. He could probably find another assignment on Fort Hood or even another unit in the state of Texas, but I think he’s got a little gypsy in his blood. He was getting that feeling it was time to move again – much like a migratory bird or a herd of buffalo. Time to find greener pastures – explore different opportunities. The military lifestyle is a transient one by nature but you do get to see a lot of cool places, meet a lot of cool people and we really don’t have outstanding debt…so there is that. So, Mr. X was ready to migrate and even more he was interested in one last overseas tour before he retires from the Army. As for me, Mrs. “I have never been out of the country, don’t have a passport, descendent of Angry Irish German farmers” – an overseas tour sounded pretty freak’n cool. Scary as hell, but exciting and cool all the same. And I now I had gotten this wild hair up my butt about burpees in China – my poor husband.

In the Army you can do one of two things – wait for someone to take care of you or try to take charge of your own future. Mr. X is more than capable of taking care of his career interests and planning for the future. Moreover, he could feel a moving coming. (Much like you can feel someone looking at you so you turn around to see who it is.) I don’t question his sixth sense on these matters. (I do, however, question that my brother-in-law has a trick knee he claims can predict weather patterns four states away.) So he began the dance that is working with your Army branch to get a new assignment. You can either make the effort to try to lead the dance or have your faced danced upon. Mr. X prefers to lead.

Dinner conversation….. Mr. X, “Italy is pretty much not going to happen. The timing is wrong. They already have their people in place there for the foreseeable future.”

In my most brilliant tone, “Oh, shit. Oh well, worth a shot.”

Dinner Conversation…. Mr. X, “Are you sure that you want to go to South Korea?

In my most brilliant tone, “Yup.”

“Well, I think you are going to get your wish.”

“Oh, Shit. OK then, cool.”

And there it was – Mr. X had bended time, space and air and worked out an assignment to The Republic of Korea (2 years because he was dragging me and the demon along – or should I say I was dragging him.). He was being assigned as a battalion PA in Area 1. This assignment meant early morning sick call and mentoring medics and medically advising his Commander and the field and a ruck sack and some fun stuff and some bullshit. Like any job – all the same, but different because the DMZ is 30 minutes away.

So the planning began – estimating our exit and war gaming our move. We traveled all summer to see and say good-bye to our family assuming the only one we would get to see “in the flesh” over the next two years would be the first born spawn. Trips to Iowa, Fort Worth, Pennsylvania and Colorado trying to get in those last hugs and those last moments. Knowing that you aren’t going to see your family for a few years makes you do really stupid stuff like jumping off the side of the mountain with a paraglide chute strapped to your back… when you’re terrified of heights…because you think your nephew would like that. Sigh… If I ever do some dumb shit like that again I will confidently report that “No, I do NOT like roller coasters, Sir. Feel free to simply float from here to where ever we are going to land, Sir.” Instead of my half-assed, “Uhm, yeah I suppose. Kind of. Guess it depends on the roller coaster. What do ya mean?”

Early September – Mr. X gets on a plane.

Late October – Our life is packed in boxes by the lowest bidder.

Early November – Me and the demon head over. Three out of four Walshes in South Korea getting settled in. Mr. X is navigating the newest area of the military machine he has been placed into.

Late November – We find out Mr. X has made the promotions list and this spring/summer will be Major Mr. X. Which is cool.

December – Merry Christmas

January – Holy Winter

Late January – US Army Medical Command sends out an email identifying Army PAs that have been selected for certain visible position throughout the Army. Whose name should appear on that list? CPT (P)….Soon to be Major…..Mr. X – that is who. Mr. X has been selected as the 2nd Infantry Division PA. A job that is awesome, huge, amazing, and one that he didn’t mind having his name thrown in the hat for. Cool jobs like that don’t just fall out of the sky and land on your foot either. He worked his ass off, was in the right place (South Korea) at the right time (whew), knows a lot of stuff about A LOT of stuff (that you don’t even have clearance for sucker), has the right education and background, communicates well and sews like no one else’s business.

Congratulations to my dear Mr. X. This is a big freak’n deal dude. I am so happy for you!! You are my Rock Star!!

“No, sir. I do not have my sofa stamped. And honestly, I cannot possible imagine what that even means. We have a sofa signed out to us from the Army so it should be good right?”

This was an actual conversation between me and some dude at Army Community Service that I overheard when I got to Korea. The names have been withheld to protect the ignorant….me….the innocent.

I totally understood what a passport was before I came to Korea. And when I say “understand” what I mean is – I had seen one before. I knew that if you were going to travel out of the country – and then come back in – then you needed a passport. Now, you will be able to land…but to get from the inside of the airport to the outside of the airport maybe….mission impossible. (I learned that from watching The Terminal with Tom Hanks). Oh…..and I knew they were expensive. So why do we need one? According to the US State Department a passport is like your international ID card. It says, “Hi, I’m Paula Walsh. I’m an American. America, specifically the State Department and the Honorable Ms. Hillary Clinton, has verified that. I would like to come into your country now, please. Have a nice day.”

Some countries are suuuper cool with that. When entering, Korean Immigration stamped my passport with their “tourist visa” that allowed me to stay in their country for 90 days. Ah, another new word Visa…

(I will pause here and let you come up with your own personal Visa/Mastercard/Credit Card joke. I played around with a few of them in my head and none of them where worthy.)

Soooo, what is a Visa? A visa is “an endorsement on a passport indicating that the holder is allowed to enter, leave, or stay for a specified period of time in a country.” That’s according to Google.

So you need a passport AND visa to get into a country? The answer to that is – usually. It appears each country has its very own rules about who can enter, for what reasons and for how long. Travelers have to check those out before heading out there into TV country. I am sure if I were rich I could just hire a travel agent and have them do all that work for me at a cost. However I am trying to purchase a $1000 ski jacket so the money has to come from somewhere. When Korea let me in, no questions asks, I assumed that every country would be like that. They are not. Looks like if I want to touch the Great Wall of China and do a burpee on it, I’m going to need to get permission to enter the country first. It appears Russia is a real bugger as well.

While I was in the internet surfing mood, I checked out what our (meaning America) rules are for foreign entry. The US State Department breaks down their visas in two categories non-immigrant (or temporary) and immigrant (or permanent). You can probably figure out what each one means. It appears there as about 30 different types of non-immigrant visas that the US issues and well, probably one type of permanent visa… But I’m a US citizen so I get to enter that country as much as I want to (as long as I have my passport), it’s a bunch of the other countries that I am worrying about right now.

So first things first…Korea. If you noticed in the second paragraph when Connor and I entered the country, The Republic of Korea stamped our passports with a 90 day tourist visa, which expires February 2013. So how does one stay in the country for two or three years when she is on a 90 day tourist visa…well because of new term #3 – “Status of Forces Agreement”. Now you need to pay attention to this one…it affects us all more than I ever appreciated until I started doing my research. First, they refer to Status of Forces Agreements as the SOFA…

Ok – I am very well aware that at this point I am about to lose a few of you…I know, learning is boring… Stay with me here.

So, what is a SOFA? A SOFA is an agreement between a host country and a foreign nation stationing military forces in that country. Because we have troops stationed in Korea there is a SOFA between the United States government and the Republic of Korea government. Because we have troops in Germany…..SOFA. Because we HAD troops in Iraq there was a SOFA between the United States government and the Iraqi government (when a new one finally got up and running).

On a side note… a pretty big disagreement with the SOFA between Iraq and the US is what our government points to for pulling everyone out of that country and not leaving any “trainers” in place. Check out this New York Times article. It doesn’t go into detail, just a brief overview, but if you did not understand what a SOFA was a lot of the meaning in this article would be a little lost. Also, I would like to mention that Service Members are NOT “immune” from doing bad, dumb, stupid, law breaking, and immoral things in other countries under a SOFA. What is usually a deal breaker for the US is when Service Members are processed in a host nation’s legal system. Private Smith may end up one Saturday night in a host nation’s jail. Yes, temporarily, totally happens usually every day. But once the Service Member is identified, the military branch will take custody of the “hooligan” and put them in Army/Navy/Air Force/ Marine jail. Subsequently, that person will be processed and perhaps charged under the United States military’s legal system The Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ). The service member may still have to pay host nation fines and get put in Army jail for longer than overnight but they aren’t going to spend 10 years being caned in Asia somewhere…watch Locked up Abroad and get back to me. So to make a long story…well, long…we can’t have combat troops under orders, in combat zones being thrown into an Iraqi jail for participating in combat operations. SOFA protects them from that. If the host country…say Iraq…won’t agree to that in a SOFA then the government will not keep US troops in that area. And yes, Rush Limbaugh, I appreciate that I have oversimplified this concept and the politics, this is not a foreign policy blog for the love of baby Jesus.

Now – on with the lesson…….As part of the SOFA between Korea and the US, I was allowed to take my driver’s license test on-post and didn’t have to go to the Korea DMV. As part of the SOFA I am obligated to follow all of the laws of the host nation. Also, with the appropriate verification paperwork from the US Army, I can apply for a SOFA stamp in my passport which allows me to extend my stay in Korea during my husband’s assignment here.

Texas massages you with its warmth. It talks you into unbuttoning your shirt and putting on those short, shorts. It makes you soft, pliable, vulnerable, weak. It turns you into a tender slab of Kobe Beef. In Texas, you shed your clothes faster than a stripper in a packed house. You put all that useless stuff in the back of your closet. After a few years, it ends up in a bag for GoodWill. It’s not like you have touched it in years and those are the rules when cleaning out your closet – If you haven’t touched it in years you should donate it. IT’S THE RULE!! In Texas you wear tank tops, flip flops and aviator sunglasses all day, every day – except for like three weeks out of the year. You wear dresses in November that only go to your knees…with a shawl…just in case the air conditioning at the restaurant is cranked up too high. You get excited for January because you don’t have to mow the lawn this month AND you get to finally wear that University of Iowa hooded sweatshirt in Longhorn country. GO HAWKS!!

So after arriving in The Republic of Korea in November, I am slowly and painfully recalling all-things-winter after eight years of allowing that part of my brain to atrophy. It is not like I don’t know how to cope with winter. I grew up in Iowa for the first 30 years of my life. I am NOT a newbie to winter. But I am here to tell you eight years in Texas really helps you forget cold and snow. You forget that cold is painful and snow makes everything harder to accomplish. You forget that you must allocate an additional ten minutes of prep time before leaving the house. This time is necessary to get everyone dressed in their winter coat, snow pants, hat, gloves, scarf, boots…did you pee before you starting putting all that crap on…CRAP! Oh Connor, is that poop I smell? CRAP AGAIN, literally. You forget that real cold requires real gear…not cute gloves and hats…but shit that will keep you from losing a finger.

Cold means survival gear. And no…it is not “snivel gear” for my Army friends – that’s just dumb. With gear = alive (maybe, hopefully). Without gear = dead (definitely). SURVIVAL GEAR. Connor was taken care of first. He may be a gi-HUGE-ic kid, but there is stuff available here for him AND we ordered a bunch of stuff for him at Christmas. However, Mommy at 5’9” and Daddy at well over 6’ are basically freaks of nature as far as the Korean clothing industry is concerned. We are the Paul Bunyan’s of our gender here. (If I had big boobs I would be in even bigger trouble…thank goodness I don’t have to worry about that.) The available options for us are pretty limited, if they exist at all. We simply walk into a clothing store and the employees are already shaking their heads no and scowling. Now, there are always on-line purchases. But how does one spend a bunch of money on snow gear…coats, pants, boots….without trying them on first? I mean you can…but it’s such a crap shoot. If someone was moving to Korea and I had to give them advice on what to do before they got on the plane…buy winter clothes. Perhaps there was some ski gear place at the Killeen, Texas mall I overlooked in my haste to leave the country…or not. Who would have thunk that the last-minute trip to Iowa in October should have included a run to Theisens for some Carhartt gear…perhaps a nice pair on Kodiak Coveralls….or quilt lined bibs? (Feel free to Google that – they exist.) In my estimation, regret feels a lot like frost bite.

Also my shoes don’t work here. New Balance Miniums and Chuck Taylors – not enough sole at the bottom. So you are basically standing directly on an ice cube….no bueno.

We hauled ourselves out to some ski store in Seoul….I saw a coat that cost $1000. No kidding. Not even trying to be funny – $1000 – might as well been $1,000,000 because that shit ain’t happening. (And yes, I do catch the irony of me being cheap and using the work AIN’T. It was intentional.) If the $200 coat can’t keep me warm you know what I need to do? Take my ass inside and stand by the heater for a few minutes, that’s what I need to do. And I am going to be totally honest here – the store didn’t even seem that nice. If I’m spending $1000 on a freak’n coat you should be meeting me at the door with a glass of wine and have a separate play area for my 2 year-old so I can shop in peace…and maybe some brownies. Perhaps an online purchase is worth the crap shoot. I can drink a glass of wine and put some brownies in the oven while I’m surfing the internet at nap time. Perfect….

I did find some amazing gloves from a place called www.snowstoppers.com. They mostly sell gloves for kiddoes, but they had adult sized gloves called eMitts. I only bought one pair to see how they fit. If they didn’t fit Shawn they were going to be mine. (Remember what I said about Paul Bunyan early.) Mr. Paul Bunyan seems to be pretty stoked with them…that, or he’s just being a good husband…(No, that dress does not make your butt look big. Yes, I like your haircut. Honey, I can’t even tell you burnt the fish, it tastes delicious.)…so mine are on the way.

If you have any suggestions as to some good quality ski gear that is reasonably priced please feel free to leave a suggestion here. We are going to keep looking around for a couple more weeks but I will eventually have to pull the trigger on something. Mr. Paul Bunyan wants to go on an overnight sledding/ski trip for his birthday next month. Perhaps it is me – perhaps skiing has become outrageously more expensive since my days on the bunny slope at Sundown in Dubuque, Iowa….or should I say…my DAY on the bunny slope. And if that is the case…feel free to enlighten me as well.